ABSTRACT
The effects of warfare and fighting on individuals and on local communities at different times and the evidence for the non-military perception and perspective on war have already been alluded to in earlier chapters. One of the problems of Byzantine history is the fact that the written evidence, upon which historians have to rely for knowledge of people’s opinions and attitudes, was nearly always produced by members of relatively privileged social strata. We thus have very little real idea of what ordinary people – peasants, merchants, craftsmen, simple soldiers – actually thought about their world. Of course, we can try to establish through the writings of the educated something of the views and beliefs of the non-literate, or at least non-writing part of society, and we can also work out through the actions taken by certain groups at certain times something of what they thought and why. For example, while writing for a limited and very elite readership, the Princess Anna Comnena, writing early in the 12th century, presents a graphic description of the effects of warfare on the provinces in the years before her father, the emperor Alexios I, had (in her view) rescued the empire from its troubles:
Cities were wiped out, lands ravaged, all the territories of Rome were stained with blood. Some died miserably, pierced by arrow or lance; others were driven from their homes or carried off as prisoners of war … Dread seized on all as they hurried to seek refuge from impending disaster in caves, forests, mountains and hills. There they loudly bewailed the fate of their friends … mourned the loss of sons or grieved for their daughters … In those days no walk of life was spared its tears and lamentation.
